Wave power energy has developed to be one of the renewable energy sources that can be of great importance for meeting the challenge to replace the traditional energy sources. The total wave power energy resources around the costs of the continents is huge and the technically exploitable part thereof is also considerable.
As is the case for many of the renewable energy sources, the economy for converting this energy into usable electric energy is the crucial aspect. In order to achieve that electric energy produced from wave energy will become competitive with the traditional ways of producing energy it is necessary to technically and economically optimize each link in the production chain. The present invention is focused on optimizing the design of the buoy used in a wave power unit.
Wave power units for producing electric energy on a larger scale are disclosed e.g. in WO 03/058055.
Traditionally the buoy of such a wave power unit has been formed as a quite compact body having the shape of a sphere, a flat cylinder or a double cone. No particular attention has been paid to the fact that the shape of the buoy affects the efficiency of the buoy to convert the wave energy into mechanical energy.
The object of the present invention is to solve the problem how to shape the buoy in order to achieve a high efficiency with respect to converting the wave energy into usable mechanical energy.